The Fifth Wheel
by DefenderofHelplessSemicolons
Summary: A few weeks into the job, Barry feels like the fifth wheel.


The Fifth Wheel

Barry had always been good with people. He made friends easily as a child and knew how to talk to adults. He volunteered at church and sang in the choir. He talked in class sometimes as boys do, but his teachers liked him. He was just popular enough with his schoolmates to avoid being teased (much) for being a teacher's pet.

He never lacked for a girlfriend in middle school or high school. In college, he had his first serious girlfriend, then a boyfriend, then a period of celibacy (an experiment; it lasted rather longer than he had expected).

Generally people found him to be thoughtful, a good listener, often ready with a dry quip. If he seemed a little too sober at first (he heard "loosen up, Frost" sixteen times in one day at the police academy; he counted, out of curiosity)—his friends learned to get him a beer and turn the game on.

Barry had always liked to solve puzzles. As a boy, he would spend hours fitting cardboard pieces together and gazing at the picture on the box. His brother would come by and want to throw the football around. Sometimes Barry acquiesced, but if he was too close to completion, he couldn't be moved. His mother finally bought him a puzzle mat so she could reclaim her table at mealtimes.

The period of exploring computer hacking in high school didn't last long. Barry was good with code, but not brilliant at it. Besides, he didn't want to sit behind a computer all day. He wanted to get out in the real world.

He and his brother were quietly, fiercely competitive. Barry would never be as athletic, but he had the patience for cultivating people that his brother did not, the ability to be genuinely interested in a total stranger. Not that he was manipulative—his parents nipped that in the bud quickly—but he liked to understand how other people's minds worked, and he became aware that that could be a strength.

Barry had always been particular. _This _toy. _This_ shirt and pants, not that set. _This_ girl. _This_ college. _This _career. His parents weren't happy when their son told them he wasn't going to be a doctor or a lawyer. They were supportive, of course, but being a police officer seemed so ... blue-collar.

He assured them he had higher ambitions. Barry wanted to make detective some day. He never said as much during the academy, but his fellow candidates guessed pretty quickly.

So it wasn't that he wasn't prepared to be a homicide detective. He'd worked his ass off the past few years to earn his shield, in point of fact, harder than he had ever worked in school. Everything from his personality to his academic skills to his understanding of the way people thought made him a good cop.

And it wasn't that he was an innocent. Barry saw his share of it, of people being horrible to each other, of people being stupid, and of people breaking laws because they were drunk or mentally ill or hated the government or knew the black helicopters were coming.

None of this prepared him for dead bodies.

Or for his new partners. Partner? No, definitely partner_s_.

Detective Rizzoli, with whom Barry was ostensibly paired, was okay: impetuous, instinctual, canny, solved her cases. The medical examiner Rizzoli palled around with was okay: logical, _way_ smarter than Barry, bit of a weird affect but helped Rizzoli solve her cases, so she was all right.

Those two were _tight_. Like, partner-tight. It wasn't like Rizzoli didn't bounce ideas off of him, but every time he needed to talk to her or vice versa, she was over at the ME's office. It was kind of weird, working like that. Sometimes he thought of himself as the third wheel.

And then there was Korsak, who was ... Korsak: gruff, sometimes as bad-tempered as a grizzly, and over-protective; his insecurity at losing his partner manifested itself in relentless crime-scene hazing. Blue-collar background, several decades older, never went to college. Completely immune to Barry Frost's people skills.

If dealing with those odd relationships wasn't enough, the specter of Hoyt stood between the three of them and Barry. Barry had read about Hoyt when he'd read Rizzoli's file. Yes, Hoyt had divided Korsak and Rizzoli, but those two and Isles had all been around at that time

. It was a common experience, something that bound the two other detectives and the medical examiner more tightly than normal.

Barry was not the third wheel. Three wheels meant stability. He was the fifth wheel. And who the hell needs five wheels?

Two weeks into this odd arrangement, Barry was still trying hard. This morning he'd tried another one of the stomach remedies offered by the local pharmacies. It hadn't helped much. This afternoon he'd learned that Rizzoli and Isles had standing workout dates, standing lunch dates, _and_ standing drinks dates, in between which one was likely to wander over to the other's office anyway. He finally buttonholed Rizzoli about an aspect of the case and got an assignment from her.

None of this seemed anything like what he had worked so hard for.

Barry tapped his pen against the case file, then leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his close-cropped hair in frustration. Another late afternoon at his desk had turned into a late night. Rizzoli had a family emergency; Isles was communing with the dead; Korsak was growling at his computer. This case was a dead end and he didn't know what to do with his three partners.

He couldn't transfer this soon. He had to stick it out.

"Hey," Korsak said. "You trying to burn a hole through the wall?"

Barry realized he was glaring at the wall opposite him. "I'm trying to use my X-ray vision, what do you think," he said, and regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth. He expected Korsak to make some crack about vomiting being his superpower.

But the older detective just snorted. "Think you could use it to see what's going on with my computer?"

Barry slid his chair over, assessed the frozen screen, and worked some magic with the task manager and virus scanner. Korsak watched in silence. "There," Barry said eventually. "Wait till that finishes running, then I'll remove any viruses."

"Viruses? My computer doesn't have any–"

The scanner beeped. Barry smiled. "It's not a big deal. Happens to everyone. Like I said, I can fix it."

Korsak gave him a look. "So you're a computer expert, huh."

"I wish. Those guys make big bucks." Barry returned to his file. "I'm just a rookie homicide detective." He heard the bitterness in his own voice and shut his mouth.

Korsak surprised him again. "Run it by me."

"What?"

"Whatever you're frowning about."

When Barry hesitated slightly, Korsak rolled his eyes. "Look, Frost, you and I may do things differently, but I can already see you're going to make one helluva cop. You're smart, you're quick, and most importantly you won't let Rizzoli run you over."

"She's a force of nature."

Korsak nodded. "Yes, she is. All any of us can do is try to keep up with her."

"Us."

"Yeah. We may be Rizzoli's weird little work family, Frost, but we're family. Even you, no matter how many times you lose it at a crime scene."

At least Korsak knew this whole thing was bizarre. Barry smiled and said precisely, "Thank you, Detective."

Korsak shifted in his chair. "All right, enough bonding. Run it by me."

Barry nodded and looked down at his file. "Victim: Asian male, age twenty-two. GSW to the chest. The thing I'm trying to figure out is..."

This partnership wasn't quite in his comfort zone yet. But maybe he'd grow out of being the fifth wheel sooner than he'd thought.

_Author's note: The muse and I haven't been on speaking terms lately. Or so I thought until this hit me. What gives, muse?_


End file.
